


All They Ever Needed

by windyScathach



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Davesprite is a sad little crow, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 17:27:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windyScathach/pseuds/windyScathach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He clung to the imagined happiness the new universe would give him silently before he remembered that it wouldn’t matter if things were really better in that world. That happiness wouldn’t belong to him because he wasn’t Dave anymore. He wasn’t Dave and would never be Dave again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All They Ever Needed

**Author's Note:**

> So..um...yeah.
> 
> I was hit in the chest by sudden Davesprite/John feels the other day and ended up writing this in order to placate myself. It ended up being a lot more angsty than I expected but oh well. 
> 
> This is the first fanfiction I've ever written for Homestuck (the first fanfiction I've ever written period) so any grammer/plot-wise mistakes are totally my own. I hope it's not as bad as I think. 
> 
> Enjoy! \o/

It was an odd experience to ride through space with no way to differentiate between time and day in the endless darkness that surrounded them. Then again, Dave’s life could have hardly been considered normal by any standards, even before Sburb had managed to change his life in ways he never could have imagined. Most kids weren’t forced to strife with their bros under the hot Texas sun every other day, nor did they find piles of shitty swords in the fridge or have to sidestep the smuppets that seemed to be fucking everywhere in the apartment he and his brother had shared. 

All of that was nothing more than a distant memory now. There was no way for him to go back to those day since the earth he had known had become a victim to the game that had fallen into their hands; the game they had all stupidly, so stupidly, played without a second thought. 

It was only meant to have been a game of fun, but Bro was dead now and his home was gone forever. John had gone ahead and blown himself up, listening to the words of a scheming troll, and Jade was presumed dead, never to log back into pesterchum after the meteorite hit her home. Everything had gone wrong. Everything.

The entire situation had become a lost cause, because how the fuck were they ever going to be able to win the game when their co-players, no, their friends were dead. The days soon begun to bleed into one another, minutes seeming like hours and hours seeming like days. For a long while he was alone with nothing but the steady sound of the surrounding clockwork, the flow of time, and the glow of purple text upon a screen to keep him company in the darkness and heat of his planet.

Suddenly, hope: a shifting of the time stream, an impulsive self-sacrifice. Sure, he was now stuck sharing a body with a feathery asshole and had a sword sticking out of his chest, but hey. John and Jade were alive, and they all at least had a fighting chance to beat the game, something that had been noticeably absent within his own timeline. 

Then, after all they had gone through in one very, very long day, they were speeding off into an alternate version of their own universe and Dave couldn’t help but wonder if he would get the chance to see Bro again, if things weren’t as incredibly fucked up there as they were in his own time. He would hide these hopes away from the others, because one’s hopes had a tendency to be smashed to bits when spoken out loud and heard by reality. He clung to the imagined happiness the new universe would give him silently before he remembered that it wouldn’t matter if things were really better in that world. That happiness wouldn’t belong to him because he wasn’t Dave anymore. He wasn’t Dave and would never be Dave again.

Now he was just some orange asshole with wings that had no right to the life that belonged to the Alpha Dave. Even his own name had been stripped away from him and replaced with Davesprite, a reminder that he wasn’t even a person to begin with but instead just another feature of the game; that he was now nothing more than a simple line of coding that could be erased at any given time. And it hurt. It hurt more than he lead on. It hurt that his friends saw him as nothing but a copy of their own Dave in this timeline. It hurt that he had been unable to save Bro and stop Jack from murdering him before his eyes. It hurt that he was so useless even when his very existence in the game now was to help out those that played it. 

Still, he hid all of the turmoil that raged beneath the surface with his ironic banter and a smirk upon his face, any emotion that may have been betrayed by his eyes hidden away behind the shades that never once left his face. No one ever suspected that there may have been anything wrong because he was Davesprite, who was always cool, calm, and collected. 

“You’re just like our Dave!”, Jade had said with a laugh once while they had been having a battle of wits. He had paused for a moment, fists ( _or talons, his stupid fucking talons that were just another sign that he wasn’t even human or a real person and was just a worthless pile of shit because he couldn’t save them all like their Dave you fucking pile of shit you let them die in your timeline-_ ) clenched before going on as if nothing had happened. It was those innocent words that hurt him the most, that reminded him that he wasn’t even the real Dave in their eyes anymore.

Perhaps that was why it took him by surprise when John slowly began to spend more time with him upon the ship. Lonely days were suddenly filled with John’s laughter and flashing blue eyes that were the bluest blue Dave had ever seen. It was strange yet refreshing, just like the clean wind John so easily could manipulate with a single wave of his hands. In fact, John was a breath of fresh air himself, blowing through his life and making all of his bitter thoughts disappear if only for a while. Dave came to cherish and anticipate the time they spent together because god damn, when he was with John he was able to pretend that he wasn’t just a flying orange creamsicle whose name and face belonged to another person riding on a meteorite somewhere else in space. 

Their simple friendship began to change one day after Dave had come across John in the silence that could be considered night, curled up in upon himself and crying quietly, his tears seeping into the ridiculously long hood that was the same bright shade of blue as his eyes. It was then that Dave learned that he and John weren’t so different in the sense that they both hid away the feelings that tormented them and kept them awake at night. John had confessed through his quiet sobs as Dave held him close to his strange not-quite body that he missed his father; that the image of his lifeless corpse and the blood that had stained every inch of the castle grounds was seared into his memories and plagued him when he was alone and the flying ship was quiet with the empty sound of sleep.  

“It’s not your fault, you know”, Dave had murmured into John’s raven hair as he buried his tear-streaked face into the ruffle of feathers around Dave’s neck.  

“But it is my fault,” he had sobbed, “I couldn’t find him fast enough. If I had found him earlier I might have been able to get him away from the castle. I could have saved him and Rose’s mom. I couldn’t even fight Jack for them. I should have stayed dead-”

“Stop,” Dave’s voice had gone hoarse, throat dry after hearing John’s words. Horror had shot through him at the very thought of John dying, of his bright light going out and never warming Dave’s life with his presence again. “You stop saying those things. You are not worthless, John. Your dad’s death was not your fault, and if I learned anything about him from all you told me on pesterchum, he would not have wanted you to wallow in guilt you don’t deserve. What was it that he was always writing in those letters you told me he left lying around all over your house for you to find like some god damn easter egg hunt? That he was fucking proud of you. And I’m telling you John, he would still be proud of you today and would have wanted you to be happy. So stop saying those fucking things before I have to pull a fucking Lalonde on you and have ourselves a feelings jam although it seems like we are having one of those either way right now so that’s a shitty threat.”

Once he had managed to get the nervous and fear laden words to stop flowing from his mouth they descended into silence once more, Dave still holding John in his arms who had gone quiet and still somewhere during the sudden slew of words. After a stretch of loud emptiness that was punctuated by the nervous rustle of Dave’s wings, a watery giggle finally managed to reach his ears as John sat up, buck-toothed smile in place once more and gradually drying tear tracks glistening on the curves of his cheeks. He stared up into Dave’s shades, eyes soft with something Dave couldn’t quite place.

“Thanks, Dave,” were the only words that left his mouth before he had settled back down and promptly fallen asleep.

It was only later that Dave realised that John had used his name, his actual name and not Davesprite, for the first time since they officially met on the ship. 

From then on there was a subtle difference in their interactions. The air was thick with  something whenever they were together, eyes nervously meeting one another in between laughs and jokes. Eventually the looks turned into small touches that they both shared. Fingers would brush one another as they would sit side by side on the ship’s helm, leaving a ghost of their touch imprinted upon the other’s skin. 

Dave had no idea what to think about it all. He did not know what to think about the feeling that swelled within him whenever he caught a glimpse of John. The feeling that only intensified whenever he managed to make John smile and his eyes dance. The feeling that burned through him the day that John had distractedly taken hold of his hand and tangled fingers and talon together, hand warm and real in his grasp, while he talked animatedly with Jade. The feeling that threatened to swallow him whole when John called him Dave, never Davesprite anymore, and erased all of the grim thoughts he had ever had about himself and who he was now. 

He stopped feeling confused about the feeling after he and John had shared their first kiss, a simple and chaste meeting of soft lips upon one another. It was a quiet event with no one else to witness it, and Dave would have thought it was only his imagination if it weren’t for the bright flush of color rising in John’s face and the shy, uncertain smile aimed his way. The uncertainty was soon wiped away as Dave descended upon his mouth, arms wrapping around each other and holding one another close, just as they had during a silent, unforgotten night months ago. Somehow, after the day Dave had held John as he cried, they had provided a safe haven for one another and along the way fallen victim to the unclear feeling they were making sense of only now. For as long as Dave was there for John, he could learn to forgive himself for something that was not his fault. For as long as Dave was simply ‘Dave’ to John and not viewed as a copy of someone else, he could learn to accept himself for who he was. They mended one another in their own way with their acceptance of one another, and that, they realized as they sat together after their kiss and reveled in the feeling coursing between them, was all they had ever needed. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So there it is. 
> 
> It was a fun little thing to write. 
> 
> Maybe I'll write something else someday if I stop feeling so lazy and get inspired again. Maybe...


End file.
